Support "trim" for value, ie remove leading and trailing whitespace

[vladimiry]

I'm using spud to convert .properties to .json.

For example this value

Answer_Translated_Understand = Do you understand this translation?

Converted to

Answer_Translated_Understand": " Do you understand this translation?",

I don't want to preserve left/leading space and I can't edit *.properties to set = without spaces (like this "Answer_Translated_Understand=Do you understand this translation?"). So it would be great to get values without spaces at left/right, perhaps as optional feature.

[aredridel]

Is there a reason you can't postprocess to do this?

[vladimiry]

Sure, this would be an extra code.

I'm using in this way:

    // convert *.properties to *.json
    spudDefers = i18nConfig.properties.map(function (item) {
        var deferred = Q.defer(),
            srcPath = path.join(i18nConfig.propertiesDir, item.file + '.properties'),
            destPath = path.join(i18nConfig.destDir, item.lang + '.json'),
            rs = fs.createReadStream(srcPath),
            ws = fs.createWriteStream(destPath);

        spud.convert(rs, 'properties', 'json', ws, function (err) {
            if (err) {
                return deferred.reject(err);
            }
            console.log('File', '"' + srcPath + '"', 'converted to', '"' + destPath + '"');
            deferred.resolve(true);
        });

        return deferred.promise;
    });

[aredridel]

Ah! you're running it as conversion process. I was in the process of ripping that out for spud version 2. The feature makes more sense in that context since you never touch the content yourself.

[aredridel]

I'd accept a patch to do this optionally in spud version 1 if you want, though do be aware that moving forward, spud version 1 will be deprecated in favor of version 2.

[vladimiry]

Yep, I would not want to read already processed json file modify and write again.

[vladimiry]

@aredridel where can I get v2 to take a look? Currently I'm using this module https://www.npmjs.com/package/spud v1.1.2

[aredridel]

https://github.com/krakenjs/spud -- the default branch is v2.x

[vladimiry]

Thanks, but no npm/bower package so far?

[aredridel]

npm install spud@2

[aredridel]

'dist-tags': { latest: '1.1.2', minimal: '2.0.1' },

[aredridel]

2.x will become latest dist-tag when the things that depend on it are stable.

[vladimiry]

Thanks, I will review v2 features.

[aredridel]

Excellent. It has a very simple, JSON-like API: just a parse and stringify method. I figured file reading was better left to node, which has good APIs for this already.

[vladimiry]

Yes, I see how this works https://github.com/krakenjs/spud/blob/v2.x/test/properties.js Well I can use v2 actually, will be a bit more code but I will have full control. So I think this issue could be closed.

[aredridel]

Awesome!

[diegone]

I actually think it'd be a best practice to trim strings in resource files. Developers may be careful adding spaces before and after, but after the files are translated into 20 different languages, linguists may not be as careful (or aware) and you open yourself up to a lot of l10n bugs because a linguist or a machine stripped or added a leading/trailing space.

[aredridel]

Definitely -- which is why a low-level tool like this should probably stay uninvolved, so that a higher-level tool can do those checks.

[vladimiry]

@diegone > I actually think it'd be a best practice to trim strings in resource files.

Not exactly, the resource file parsers should not recognize leading/trailing space at all, this is standard behavior on Java at least and this is good. If there is need in such spaces it could be done using Unicode escape sequence \u0020 or in code logic. That is why I created this issue - parser processes resource files is not quite the standard way (preserves leading/trailing). But now I see v2 and will use it.

[diegone]

But v2 still preserves the space, see keyValueTest2: https://github.com/krakenjs/spud/blob/v2.x/test/properties.js#L23

[vladimiry]

Yes, it's, but using v2 I will have result in form of object so will able to post-process it before write to file.